There's a storm coming ..

So, here we are, in what seems to be our last week here in Malabar, that is, if all goes well .. 
With only 3 days to go you would think we were good to go, but wouldn't you know it .. another part of the truck is failing! Un-be-$%#@&-lievable !
This time it's the brake fluid pump, it's dripping slowly. Fortunately it's not that expensive, has already been ordered, arrived and is going to be installed tomorrow, which will be a quick and easy job, but still ... is this ever going to end?

Point in case, we've had a stormy couple of days and some hours of heavy rain, which caused our little screen tent to rip it's roof straight through from one end to the other.
Other than by the strong wind, it mainly ripped because long months of intense sun here in Florida deteriorated the fabric to the point that it was very thin and tore easily.
It's only a $39 expense (Walmart) but, like I said .. is this ever going to end ..?

A little Otis Reddis stress relief here:  ♪ Sittin' on the dock of the bay .. ♫

But enough of that. Let's stay positive here. We've got a trip to plan!
It looks like we'll be leaving on Sunday and we were able to make reservations for Sunday and Monday night at a campground on the south side of Lake Okeechobee, and for Tuesday through Thursday night at Homestead, a little further south.
The State campground we want to go to at Naples is full, but we still have a little time, so I'll keep checking to see if somebody cancels and otherwise we have several others we can try.

'Our' campground continues to empty out, more and more people are leaving and I think by the 1st of April, this coming Monday, most others are going too. 
This little fella is going nowhere and he'll probably be happy to have the grounds to himself again. It's a Red-bellied Woodpecker:

Not that you can see his belly, and it isn't that red anyways, so we're not missing anything here ..

Just look at the beautiful patterns on those feathers!

While relaxing at that aforementioned dock, I snapped a quick shot of this Osprey with his catch:

I've done some baking lately, although I have not much to show for since I forgot to take pictures, so you have to take my word for it that I made some cinnamon rolls, a pineapple upside-down cake, several different muffins and this apple-spice cake which came out pretty good ..

Mm, that reminds me, I better start baking some 'for-the-road' cookies!

James has diligently kept up flushing the cooling-reservoir with water and cascade to remove the last traces of oil.

    

He's done this every 2 days and it looks like it's almost gone now. He'll fill her up with anti-freeze on Saturday.

Today is his last work day, he'll be wrapping everything up and will pick up the tools he'd put in storage for the last 2 months, and put them back in the truck.  
We'll probably do a last grocery run on Saturday to stock up on groceries for a week (or 2) and than we'll start packing up. 
All we'll have left to do on Sunday will be disconnecting and we'll be ready to go!
It's probably going to be a while, most likely until we've reached Ponchatoula around the 13th of April, before I'll post again so let's keep our fingers crossed that all will go well and we'll have a save and uneventful trip!

See you later alligator 

(and yes, hopefully we're going to see some of those)!

This is our route: